The Petra Zone

Nice! I saw a local news story about a record store owner and he was saying that record(LP) sales have increased every year for 8-10 yrs now and some Labels are now making them and starting to mass market them. I know Radio Shack sells a real nice phonograph, and I was in my local Radio Shack the other day and the manager was telling me all of sudden over the last 6 months he has been selling them and he says he sells about 10 or a week.

It has leveled off. There are only two of the major pressing plants left, and one of them is closing. There are some smaller, less quality plants, catering to the DJ markets (mostly foreign). The cost of pressing a record and packaging it is quite high compared to "$0" for a download.

Best Buy made a move to stock LPs and got soaked. It did not take off nationally as they hoped. They are getting out of it.

Turntable and cartridge/stylus manufacturing has decreased, but there are hundreds of models made for the high-end audiophile markets. At the audio shop, we have sold $6,000 tables and $6,000 cartridges, $4,000 RIAA preamp stages, etc. Of course, every time you play an LP, there is less to play back next time. Diamonds dragging across vinyl = grooves widening, deepening, changing the audio/increasing noise. So, an aging and often used record collection definitely does not sound good, or as good as it did brand new, making the whole high end turntable thing stupid to me.